Microsoft E3 "rape joke"

[Nanor]

Psi kindly posted a link to this article about a demo of the new Killer Instinct game coming out. You can see the video there and hear exactly how it went down but basically the male player had the upper hand and said "Here we go. Just let it happen. It'll be over soon."

What do you guys think? Harmless banter or does this expose the true misogyny of the gaming industry?

 

[Panda with issues...]

As someone who leans to the left on these issues, and generally finds using 'rape' in this kind of context unnecessary, generally offensive and is ashamed whenever I use it thus (and have desperately been trying to cut it out completely), this was a total non-event.

If I hadn't been informed that apparently this was a rape joke, I wouldn't even have noticed, again, as someone who tries to be, and is, a little sensitive to this stuff.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

I think I would have laughed too, but i'd have never made a connection to rape.

 

[Crystal]

It doesn't exactly show them in a good light, would the same have been said if they were both male players?
As someone is very sensitive to these issues, I'm not exactly impressed and I think the reaction of the public to it shows that there was something wrong there.

 

[Ronin Storm]

It doesn't exactly show them in a good light, would the same have been said if they were both male players?

I think, in this case, the answer is yes. I don't think this was a male-female issue. I think this was a dominance assertion issue.

Mind you, I generally don't think that gaming banter is safe for public consumption so I have no idea why it was allowed as part of that demonstration. Best case, it would be a slight boost to the feel of the game. Worst case, they could make a racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise offensive comment by accident and tarnish the demo and their company. Surely someone could have seen this coming?

 

[Panda with issues...]

I guess my opinion was this was a throw away comment about submission. Submission hardly being a shocking event in a fighting game.

 

[Ronin Storm]

I guess my opinion was this was a throw away comment about submission. Submission hardly being a shocking event in a fighting game.

No, sure, but there's winning with self-praising banter and then there's gloating publicly in an opponent-demeaning fashion. The former would have played fine, the latter never does.